Thus far I haven’t commented much in public on the controversy around The Passion. Having finally seen it, though, I’m now in a position to address some of the criticisms that have been made of the film:
1) Brutality. Many parts of the film are brutal. Some in the audience will have a hard time enduring some of these (particularly the second phase of the scourging of Jesus and the Crucifixion). That being said, the film is not an exercise in sadism. The focus is not on the violence for its own sake but on what Jesus as a Person is undergoing.
2) "Ad Gibson" attacks. After seeing the film, I have no patience for people who have tried to psychoanalyze Mel Gibson and interpret the film as a manifestation of a brutality fetish on his part. I can’t know what happens in another man’s heart, but if Gibson had wanted the film to simply roll around in gore, it would have been much more brutal than it was (the movie is certainly not the bloodiest or most sadistic that Hollywood has produced). From what this film brings to the screen, it appears to be simply what it is: An attempt to be realistic about what happened during the Passion. That attempt requires us to look at things that are brutal.
The charge that the movie reflects sadism on Gibson’s part is simply an ad hominem–an attack directed “to the man,” and it tells us more about the person making it (i.e., that he wants to attack Gibson) than it tells us about the movie. Even more despicable are attempts to attack Gibson based on his father (who is a kook). To attack a man based on his relations is unseemly in the extreme and deserves to be dismissed out of hand. I have no patience for individuals who are vile enough to try to ad hominem a man based on his parentage.
Neither, for purposes of evaluating the movie, am I concerned about charges that Gibson himself may be a radical traditionalist. Lots of Hollywood actors and directors have all kinds of views that I don’t agree with or approve of, but as long as they don’t intrude these views into their films, they are not relevant to film criticism.
3) Anti-Semitism. I also have no patience for those who want to level charges of anti-Semitism at the movie. There is simply no basis for that. There are both good and bad Jews and good and bad Romans in the movie (including Jews and Romans who are not identified as Christians). Neither Jew nor Gentile is portrayed as worse than the other. In fact, by far the most brutal characters in the film are certain Roman soldiers, not the Jewish leaders.
What the movie does portray—and it is explicit about this—is that God loves man, that he is willing to extreme lengths forgive him, that Jesus loves and prays for his persecutors, that they did not take his life from him, and that they did not understand what they were doing. In fact, the moments when Jesus explains that his persecutors do not know what they are doing are among the most moving in the film.
I will concede that Gibson missed an opportunity in how the film deals with the conflict between Jews and Romans. In one scene the Roman governor Pontius Pilate tells his wife that he feels trapped. He has spent eleven years putting down rebellions while having the rotten station assignment of Judea, and now he fears a new rebellion will break out over Jesus: Either the high priest Caiaphas will start an uprising if Jesus is freed or Jesus’ followers will start an uprising if he is not. This paints Pilate as a complex and torn character, which is what the Gospels depict him to be.
Caiaphas himself is not torn in this movie. He simply wants Jesus dead. Why? Because he perceives Jesus as a blasphemer (which is what he would be if he weren’t in actuality the Son of God). Some will not like this, thinking that the film’s Caiaphas is some kind of bloodthirsty zealot. I think, however, that people who take offense at the high priest’s determination to see Jesus dead do not really understand just what blasphemy is or how grave an offense against God it is. Having forgotten the gravity of this sin (or even that it is a sin), they are incapable of understanding why the high priest would act as he does. This says more about them than it does about the film’s portrayal of Caiaphas.
Yet Caiaphas is not as single minded in the Gospels as he is in the movie, and here is where Gibson missed an opportunity. In John 11:45-53, Caiaphas reveals that one of his main motives in wanting Jesus dead is the fact that he fears that Jesus will start a revolt which will cause the Romans to invade and wipe out the Jewish nation. If Gibson had brought that fact into the film it would have made Caiaphas more two-dimensional and have created a sublime parallel to Pilate’s fears: Both men are afraid of a disastrous revolt, and their mutual fear and misunderstanding creates the perfect storm around Jesus that sends him to the Cross.
If Gibson had done this it would have further deflected charges of anti-Semitism and created a moment of great art, but the film is already great art and already goes out of its way to avoid even the appearance of anti-Semitism (for example, the final cut of the film omits the line from Matthew 27:25, “His blood be on us and on our children”).
For a year the Jewish Anti-Defamation League (ADL) has been attacking this film baselessly, arguing that it could inflame anti-Semitism and drive a wedge between Jews and Christians. For some time I have felt that it was the ADL itself that was driving a wedge between Jews and Christians, and seeing the final film only confirmed this. Forgive me if I am blunt about this, but the activists who have been charging the film with anti-Semitism without even seeing it are hypocrites, pure and simple. They are knee-jerk reactionaries seeking to exploit the situation for their own ends.
What are those ends? For some it may be as simple as trying to make a living. They are activists, and activists need something to oppose. Since accusing others of anti-Semitism has worked for them in the past, they may have seen this film as another likely target with which to energize their supporters and make hay.
I can’t help wondering, though, if there isn’t something else in their motives: The Jewish people have a long history of suffering at the hands of anti-Semites, and Christian anti-Semites (who are far from the only kind; Muslim anti-Semites being another obvious type) often have initiated pogroms and other persecutions after being whipped up about their faith. It is natural, therefore, for non-Christian Jews to start worrying if they see Christians getting too excited about their faith, and the most realistic portrayal of the central events of the gospel ever filmed could certainly get Christians excited about their faith.
I therefore suspect that some have been opposed to the film because they don’t want Christians to be too excited about their faith. In other words: If there are to be Christians then these individuals want them to be lackadaisical, anemic, “ecumenical” Christians, the kind who never under any circumstances criticize things in Judaism, who never persecute Jews, and who certainly never evangelize them. No, the kinds of Christians who are wanted are those who buy into higher critical reinterpretations of the Gospels, who don’t get excited about their faith, and who—above all—leave Jews alone.
I personally have great respect and admiration for Judaism and for individual Jews. That is one reason why I am a student of Hebrew. Yet I also acknowledge that there is room for criticism in every community, the Jewish one included. Here is one criticism: It is unacceptably cynical and manipulative to falsely accuse a work of Christian art of anti-Semitism for the motive of keeping Christians from getting excited about their faith. Christians should be allowed to celebrate their faith without disingenuous manipulation attempts from others.
Of course, not all critics of the film in the Jewish community have this as a motive. Some have simply been scared by the activists in their community into thinking that the film may be anti-Semitic. But my knowledge of human nature and of the relevant history leads me to think that some of the critics are trying to manipulate public opinion regarding the movie for ulterior motives.
The danger, of course, is that once the film comes out (as it now has)–and people actually see it and realize that it is simply a telling of the gospel story and not a piece of Nazi propaganda–that the situation will boomerang on the ADL. People will realize that it was crying wolf and that it had ulterior motives in attacking the film. Some may even connect the dots enough to realize that one of those motives as keeping the goyim from getting worked up about their religion. If so, or even if Christians simply get tired of having a film version of the gospel story cynically smeared in print, this would drive the very wedge between Jews and Christians that the activists professed they were trying to avoid.
As the release date of the film approached, awareness of this reality seemed to sink in on the folks over at the ADL, and a lot of backpedaling started. Abe Foxman, the executive director of the ADL and the lead critic of the film, acknowledged that he didn’t believe that the film itself was anti-Semitic and that Mel Gibson himself is not an anti-Semite, but that he feared that the film would inspire and inflame anti-Semitism in others, particularly in countries less enlightened than America.
This is the language of backpedaling, of admitting that you got too hysterical about something and are now trying to ameliorate the situation. It’s also one reason that I regard Mr. Foxman and his associates, to be blunt, as shortsighted hypocrites who stand to do more damage to Christian-Jewish relations by their actions than would have occurred had they simply let Christians celebrate their faith without trying to rain on their parade.
